Updated May 2023
Email Marketing is competitive. Brands compete for inbox attention, and marketers are as busy as ever. In my 21 year career in email, I have always read about and watched the current email marketing trends that shape our industry, and for 2023, I thought I would give the email world a bit of the Andrew Kordek vision on email marketing trends that should be top of mind in 2023.
Please understand that mileage will vary on these trends, depending on what vertical your brand is in and your major corporate initiatives for 2023.
Don’t get me wrong, MPP is an excellent thing for the industry, but we need to focus on stuff that will move the needle, and the last time I checked, open rates generally don’t pay the bills.
Suck it up and boycott those who constantly want to talk about it. It’s time to opt out of the MPP conversation.
Do an inventory of the data you have that you believe will have the most significant impact on the bottom line of your email program, and carefully draw out a plan to execute against it. The data can be as simple as the sign-up date, last interaction on the site, last-click, geo, or even previous conversion. Use something in a test with a higher than average impact with a lower-than-average internal level of effort to pull off. Then, benchmark it, move on to the next test, and use the winner as the new control.
Stop waiting for the white coat analysts to conduct quarter-long data analysis and be bold enough to try something new with data.
Take control and ask for forgiveness later.
Take a morning and spend 2-3 hours watching people sign up for your email program and ask for feedback. These people should not know your brand or work in your department since they already know the process and experience. You want to see what they do and how they react to the steps in the email content, along with the first email they receive.
Then once you do that, ask yourself if that is the user experience you want your subscriber to have. Chances are, it is not, and your new task/trend will be to make it unforgettable.
Your brand is judged from the moment they get to your site to the first email and the 34th email in their inbox. You have to make it amazing and transparent; otherwise, your subscribers will be silently opting out of your program with reckless abandon.
It’s time for you to put your unsubscribe link at the top and bottom of your email and make it obvious and intuitive for the subscriber to get off your list. It’s time for brands to become more transparent and give options to people that have typically not been there. Don’t fear the unsubscribe; embrace it.
Let’s take a look at 4 subject line examples I have recently received (knowing the brands content) with the revised subject line following this new trend:
Recommendation: Flash sale now.
Recommendation: There's still time.
Recommendation: mmmm... new flavors.
Recommendation: Wrinkles? Do this..
For 2023, brands need to create triggered-based re-engagement journeys that start with the early to late-term streams of emails. Each journey needs to be unique regarding the messaging and CTA while providing value to the recipient.
Automating re-engagement affords you more time to test what works on a grander scale because you have put forth the effort to start, but now the actual race begins.
4. BIMI (Brand Indicators for Message Identification): In my opinion, BIMI is shaky and not widely proven to have a long-term impact
3. Micro-Segmentation: Why have so many segments if you can't message differently to each of them?
2. STO (Send Time Optimization): STO is an educated guess at best and with open rates on life support, it will be harder than ever to determine the best day and time to send
Number 1 distraction in the email industry today
1. The $42 to $1 rule. Don’t believe it, don’t aim for it, don’t talk about it…. get better at delivering value to your subscribers, and the ROI will play itself out.
It may seem silly to make sure that you have to make everything clickable as a brand, but don't ever assume people know what you want them to do. This trend will always be because you can never have too many links or CTA’s for the customer to convert.
Email Deliverability is a tricky part of email marketing success, and it’s time to set aside some of your email budgets to monitor and mitigate the deliverability of your emails, especially to the top 5 domains in your subscriber base. Getting into the inbox is a privilege and not a right, so you need to make a line item in your budget for deliverability services and no longer treat it as a “free” item.
Over the years, I have spoken with thousands of marketers, and in quite a few cases, they struggle with base-level optimizations for their email campaigns.
It’s time to put on your big professional pants and work on stuff that matters, and hopefully, these 9 Email Marketing Trends For 2023 reflect that.